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PortForward Reviews Summary
The company demonstrates a mixed reputation, with some customers praising the effectiveness of the software and the dedication of support staff who provide valuable assistance. Notably, individuals have reported successful outcomes when working with specific representatives. However, significant concerns arise regarding the overall reliability of the product, slow response times from customer service, and difficulties in obtaining refunds. Many customers express frustration with unresponsive support and the perceived lack of transparency surrounding the money-back guarantee. This combination of positive and negative feedback suggests a need for improvement in customer communication and product reliability.
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I needed to try potential solutions for using a static IP address for database access. Although I ended up not using this product, the support answered all my questions and helped me determine if their product was a good fit for me or not. In the end we decided it wasn't and they refunded my money no problem.
Yours is the first phantom company I have ever come across and do not deal with phantoms or ghosts that advertises an easy to use port forwarding program that is not ready for the real world. Only 3 people, no phone number or address. Because of disappointing performance with your product, I expect the rest of my money back so I can use it on a real company instead if a phantom. I will continue to complain publicly until I get the refund I am demanding. Your long explanation did nothing to move me because you appear to be a fly by night company and are not up to the required tasks in the real world to deal with your clients efficiently.
Hey Robert, I'm sorry that you got double billed and I'm glad that we were able to refund you. We allow people to make 2 purchases / day because some customers have needed to purchase 2 copies / day for them selves and others. In your case that rule allowed you to accidentally click the "Buy" button twice. In any case, we always refund accidental double purchases as long as you let us know within 90 days (the limit for processing refunds with our CC processor. In addition we are thinking about making our cart only allow a single purchase per day because the reality is MOST customers do only want 1 copy / day.
We don't have a phone number because there is just the 3 of us doing support and we get so many calls from people wanting free support that we simply can't handle the workload. We have a very popular site and less than 99.9% of our site traffic actually makes a purchase, yet most of them want their problem solved. When we had a public number it rang non-stop. There are not enough hours in the day to offer phone support for a $40 product. That's why we have the message system. Besides, supporting your network over the phone is pointless. We need to know things that you will have a hard time answering. That's why we have the ticket number system. A support ticket includes things like your network map, router IP address, hops to the internet... all the good stuff that allow to figure out why your port forward is not working.
For most customers it's not hard to get it working, but for a few it's really, really hard to figure out why your network is not doing what we expect. We can usually figure it out and get your ports forwarded. In order to break even we have to get it working in 2.5 hours or less ($40 at $15 / hour). We spend more than that on many of our customers because in the end that time spent is time making our software better.
I don't like being called a scam because I literally dedicate my life to this website. This is all that I do. This is all that Dave does. And we are very, very proud of our website and the guides and software that we offer.
I purchased PFConfig and ran into a little trouble trying to configure it to work for my router but I was in very good capable hands with the support help team. They were prompt to act with simple instructions and if I found it hard to comprehend they were there to do it for me. It's nice to use a programme that's backed by a dedicated team giving you 110% support that care about each customer using there software They are very polite and genuine. I would not go anywhere else for a product like this that not only is fantastic and simple to use but offers the best team behind it backing you all the way. Thank you
Jason was really great to work with. I have an 8 camera setup on my from Costco installed on my vacation home and I couldn't figure out how to access it from my main home. After some fiddling around with remote access Jason was able to get me viewing the cameras just fine.
I'm not sure why there are bad reviews on here. I think some people are just not happy if they don't get instant gratification. I haven't had customer support like this in a long time so my thanks go out to the port forward team.
I've been trying for a while to get my Xbox One to get open nat. It turns out I had 2 routers and didn't know it, but the support guys tedie and allen figured it out. Once they got that little nugget sorted out it was a snap. Thanks for sticking with me guys, it was a real learning experience.
I saw their 100% guarantee and figured what is there to lose? $39.95 to be exact. There guarantee is disclaimed in their fine print. - "All sales are final". Do yourself a favor and avoid this scam.
While I had hoped this program would be a quick fix for my port forward issue, it wasnt. Since I paid for it I gave Support a try. I was told the program didnt recognize my router even after I picked it from the list of supported routers in the program. Next I was told they would add Support for my router if I used there tools in the program to help with that. Step one send router screen captures of all screens in the router config. Days went by and Im told the router is more difficult than expected. Next step was an option to use the PFConfig tool to allow remote login for support to test the router. After setting this up and after days go by I get a message they are still waiting for screen captures? I reminded them we had moved to PFConfig tool and was told my problem would be solved soon. I dont know if this program works but Support does not.
John R
I've been trying to get my security cameras setup for weeks with no success. I need to access them from home, but they are at work behind my router. There's no way to get around the router without a port forward, but I just couldn't figure out the right settings. Jason was able to figure it out and connect me to all 3 cameras. I'm blown away at the amount of time he spent on my setup and his dedication to getting it to work.
I wanted to play Call of Duty with my friends but I kept getting booted out of the lobby. Someone suggested this software and I tried it and it worked. All I had to do was forward Xbox One and I was able to join the game.
This software is the reason why you should always read reviews before you purchase anything and it has cost me $39 for not sticking to my normal practice of checking a company before I buy something and sticking mainly to the bigger brand names from a trust perspective.
People, including myself buy this software for a quick fix. It is often for a common techie problem or something that we are struggling to fix quickly. For me it was the need to quickly login to my modem, having not done so before and not knowing the manufacturer default login and also, more importantly for port forwarding.
This software failed miserably on both counts. In fact it took several attempts for it to even stop telling me that I was in trial after entering the full version key several times. About the only thing that worked on this was the static IP address which in itself ended up in my having to completely go back to default factory settings as it cut me off the internet entirely.
The Forward Port to Computer feature is about as much use as a chocolate tea pot. It does absolutely nothing and does not have my very common model of modem TP LINK added to its list.
Find password is nothing but a common admin v password login defaults for the common manufacturers and if you are living outside the EU or USA the chances of it finding this for you are remote.
Router login makes a suggestion but then returns a dead url for you to change your router settings. Really? The Port Finder feature tells me to close the application of the game that I am in before it can work ~ I am not in any game.
I doubt very much that I will get a refund for this useless software that I have spent more time trying to get to work than the original problem. If for some strange reason I do I promise I will come back here and at least let you all know that they repaid me. You might be waiting a lot time!
Update: Actually they did get back to me very quickly after this review and have refunded my original payment along with an explanation that they are a small hard working company striving to get things right and working all hours to improve things. Good Luck.
Hey Andy,
I recognize that your experience was bad and I'm sorry that it didn't work out for you. I'm the programmer for all of these products so I take everyone's feedback to heart.
The software absolutely DOES provide a quick fix if your router's firmware is supported. We support 4,000 router firmwares and we add more every single day by working with customers just like you. We cannot add firmware instantly, it takes us time, sometimes a couple of days because we have to tear apart the router's HTML and Javascript (remotely, I might add) and then add commands to the software to handle it. As routers get more and more complicated it gets harder and harder to "get around" the crazy JS that we find in them. Any way, if your router is supported then you fire up PFConfig, click Update router, and it puts the entries in exactly as advertised. If your router is not supported then we do our best to add support.
Find Password does indeed check all known versions of admin vs password, but it also does so much more as well. It allows you to test various guesses based on rules that you might have used to create your password. Like let's say you knew that your password was "cat" but you couldn't remember if you used "c@T" or "ca+" or any other combination. Router Password will try all of those crazy password combinations until it gets logged in. I have a testing bench of 100's of routers that I test the software on and it works on all of them. I have a few TP-Links and it works on them. Clearly it didn't work on yours. I'm happy to add support, but it will take some time.
Router Login loads your router's login screen. For you this may seem like a trivial task. For others opening up a command prompt, copying the correct IP address (gateway in IPConfig), and putting it in the address bar is challenging. I know this because I personally teach people how to do it all the time. We didn't write Router Login to disenfranchise you. We wrote Router Login because our customers asked for it. It was added to Network Utilities to make peoples lives easier.
This software is not front work for manual work. That wouldn't make money. The software MUST work for at most of our customers because just about 100% of our "require support" customers we end up upside down on. It takes just under 3 hours to cost $40 of support. We can easily burn 3 hours on a single customer, and we do it all the time.
I'm happy to refund your money. Send me an email: jason at portforward dot com.
This software is not a solution. It is a suggestion. You need to fight your way through a highly resistant defense against providing consumer service and then "work with" one of the techs to solve your issues. The software on its own is useless. I guess if you spend enough time, your issue might be resolved and you might feel grateful. It would be better if the software worked. It's a ripoff, in my opinion, or worse.
Hey Harvey,
I'm sorry that you feel ripped off. The software absolutely works, but apparently it didn't work for you. Keep in mind that we support well over 4,000 different routers. Add to that the fact that everyone's network is slightly different and you can imagine that there are times when it doesn't all come together. Does this mean that it's a ripoff? I don't think so.
As new routers come out we try to add support for them through the support ticket system and customers like you. If we were not able to forward your ports for you, either through the software or manually, then I'm more than happy to refund your money. We are not interested in defrauding anyone. Support costs money and when we fail to solve a port forwarding issue we lose money. That's just the way it goes.
If you'd like to talk to me more about this I'm available through email and on the support system. My name is jason, and my email is jason at portforward.com.
I went and bought the program cause it is an easy tool to optimize your online connection in video games and such. At first it didn't work for me but the tech support guy helped me find a solution when i basically gave up. He helped me optimize my two routers so that i can open any port that i need. He was kind and knew his way around the routers/modems. I suggest this program to anyone trying to open his port cause it is easy to get around the program and if you don't know how to, you get the support you need from the developer.
These guys really know what they are doing. It took some effort but we managed to pull it off. Thank you guys for working so hard with me on this. I've never gotten this good of support from an online business before.
Chances are as with me it will not work and you will not get a refund. In fact you will be lucky if they acknowledge you at all after they grab your money. For me it was costly and useless
Was having trouble getting ports open for my Xbox One, so I bought this program as it stated to be fast and easy. I've been talking to Tedie for more than a $#*!ing month. Fast and easy my $#*!, the staff have no $#*!ing idea what they're doing. Stay away from this and save yourself some money. Still waiting for refund.
I got an amazing support from Allen and Jason! They helped me port forwarding my Xbox One. I suggest this program to all the people who can't play their videogames fluently.
Hey Francesco, I have not received any emails from you. I just checked my spam folder and they are not in there either. If you are trying to get ahold of me I'm not seeing it from my end. We have about 200 users with the first name of "Francesco" and I can't quite seem to track you down in the message system that way either. Please post a message in the message system and specifically ask for me, or try sending me an email again. I'll watch for your message.
- jason
I can't say enough about Jason B. He rescued a pretty tough situation for me and never gave up. I had an older router that I was trying to get two cameras functional on and it took some time but viola - it's great and thanks to Jason.:-)
This absolutely was not worth it to try and use to port forward for my xbox. After going through 3 weeks of back and forth with them, it still didn't work and even though if they say you get your money back if you're not happy; you don't. Don't bother!
Hey Ben, I'm sorry that you weren't able to get a port forwarded to your Xbox One. We are really good at making it work, so if Tedie or Allen had problems then most likely you just have a challenging network to work with. Getting Nat Type Open is one of the things that we are great at, so I expect it to work.
Any way, if you're not happy then just send me an email and I'll make it right. We are not in the business of having unhappy customers.
- jason at portforward.com
Got amazing suport from Tedie via Ammyy,
I was struggling how to open ports since i am behind
Multiple routers but Tedie fixed it!
They are working on adding support now. Still at trial and error phase. Hopefully it will all work out soon.
Hey Bryan, I'm sorry that you feel this way. Send me a message and I'll look up your support ticket and take care of this. We are not in the business of stealing money and we work very hard to support all of our customers. I don't want you to share your email address on here, but if you can tell me the first 5 or 6 letters I'm sure I can track you down. Otherwise, my email is jason at portforward dot com.
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Thanks for the kind words Tom.